Easter and creeds go together, for many reasons. Not just because the creeds incorporate Easter, but also because they only exist because of Easter. What better way to celebrate Easter than to use the Nicene Creed as a love poem from God to his people? Almost every line, while familiar through repetition, has had the power to overturn and reconfigure both whole civilisations and solitary individuals.
“On the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures,” changed the whole ancient world and challenges the whole modern world, too. It set the ancient world free from dark capricious gods, who were as tricky and sometimes deadly as they were beneficent. It sets the modern world free from its hubris, deathly utopias and false optimism about the human condition.
